What Does the Chess.com CEO Do Each Day?

5:15am - Alarm goes off. I pop out of bed. I never snooze. I'm almost always excited for the day!

5:16-5:40am - Emails, emails, emails. Slack, slack, slack. Many of our team members from around the world have already been at work for hours and I'm looking forward to hearing from them! This morning's topics were our new ChessCenter intro, optimizing V3 performance, a team member with some health issues, several daily reports, an upcoming open source browser extension, and approval to order 3 new servers. 

5:45am - Drink a protein shake with pre-workout and drive off to Crossfit.  (First rule of Crossfit - you MUST talk about Crossfit!) Today was row sprints. Warmup with Turkish getups. Then 200m sprint, my time was 32 seconds. Then 10x 250m sprints w/ 1 min rest in between each. I averaged 45s each. 

7:20am - At home. More emails and slack conversations on the same topics. 

7:41am - Drink a nasty shake of natural flavored whey protein and supergreens powder (smells and tastes like fish food).

7:43am - Continue reviewing team member tasks. Articles in multiple languages (coming soon). Live chess features (many cool things launching in September). Review of new Gambit.com designs. 

8:15am - Hug and kiss the kids and wife as they head out the door for school dropoff.  

8:16am - Gather and separate the dirty laundry and start a load. Then back to emails.

8:26am - Eat an orange from our garden.

8:30am - Email about future chess variants. And then one about running the Skyline to Sea trail with friends. 

8:33am - Reviewing a few awesome new nostalgic themes coming soon to V3. 

8:48am - Log on to Chess.com read comments, answer messages, and play my daily games. 

8:50am - Remove the avatar of someone impersonating staff member - lol.

8:53am - Create tickets (feature requests) for new admin/moderator tools from support staff. 

8:59am - Setup interview with new potential team member for Gambit.com

9:02am - More and more emails (daily reports, junk email, drowning...).

9:13am - Test Chesskid.com in Spanish! Wow - it's amazing, and it's coming soon! We will be launching in several languages next month. 

9:22am - Working on open source browser extension. Stay tuned! More emails. 

9:45am - Play my daily chess moves. (I may or may not have been in bathroom at the time.)

10:12am - Email my friends planning my own birthday party this weekend. A Saturday full of hockey, Crossfit, running, biking, and pool basketball. And tons of food. 

10:13am - Back to emails, review browser extension and chesscenter intro videos.

10:19am - Gather eggs and feed kale to the chickens. We have six chickens. They like me - because I bring food. The kids enjoy them, and I like seeing the kids do the work. Making breakfast...

10:34am - Sit down to eat. 6 eggs (some were tiny!), 2 pieces bacon, tortilla chips (my weakness), pepper jack cheese, pineapple salsa. Eat while doing more email.

11:41am - Finish loooong chat about php7 upgrade. Might need to wait until after V2 goes away.

11: 42am - Off to do 50 hockey shots as i am trying to learn to play hockey. Shooting for 100 per day (pun intended).

12:03pm - Hockey went OK. Working on wristers (decent), snaps (terrible), and slaps (ugh). Struggling. Need MOAR weight on the stick and more wrist turnover.

12:04am - Doh! Forgot to forward the laundry...

12:05am - More email. Slack. Email. Slack. Email. Slack. Time warp....

2:31pm - Just realized I haven’t showered. Not unusual. I’m gross. But first my daily chess moves…

2:54pm - Clean and dressed. Pre-halloween beard coming in nicely. (Gives me lots of options...)

2:55-4:25pm - Marathon session of reviewing nearly every open ticket we have in Jira and assigning to milestones. Closing some duplicates. Moving some around. There are about 40 people in there and a lot of open tickets.... Bananas. 

4:25pm - Head to an unusually early dinner with family. I had 3 pieces of Pizza My Heart. Delicious. I tell myself I'm carbo-loading for a grueling Saturday of exercise coming up. 

5:48pm - Back home on emails. Do some http/2 testing on Chess.com and ChessKid.com.

7:02pm - Testing new fun animation mode coming soon(ish). Done with most work for today will be some more emailing before the night is over. Off to shoot 50 more pucks...

7:45-8:25pm - Minecraft with my kids. We are working on building a giant treehouse in creative. And in our latest survival world I found 1 new emrald (up to 12!) and 8 more diamonds. I just LOVE mining. My favorite part of the game. 

8:26-9:15pm - Unwind and watch Jim Gaffigan show with my wife. iTunes and chill, I guess? 

9:16pm - Brush. Floss. 

9:18-9:45pm - Emailzzzzzzzz.....

NOTES: 
- Yes those are my actual chickens (and my actual kale)
- Yes that is my actual hockey net
- Yes I work from home (everyone at Chess.com does)